


and we're burning one hell of a something

by bittereternity



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, I love them so much, Post-Finale, Romance, of sorts, this pairing you guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-05
Updated: 2013-08-05
Packaged: 2017-12-22 11:18:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/912585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bittereternity/pseuds/bittereternity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her first glimpse of him in days is through iron bars of a prison cell as he blinks at her, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, under a frizzy mop of hair. There is a joke here somewhere, but she’s forgotten how to laugh.<br/>Or, Beverly writes to Will in prison. Post-finale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and we're burning one hell of a something

*

there’s no chance

at all:

we are all trapped

by a singular

fate.

 

Charles Bukowski, _Love is a Dog from Hell_

_*_

He doesn’t call.

She would be lying, of course, if she said that she expected him to.  She doesn’t even know if he’s _allowed_ phone-calls, or rather allowed them to anyone but his lawyer and his therapist. It doesn’t negate the fact that sometimes the phone rings  --  in the middle of the night, in the middle of lunch, when it’s in the bedroom being charged -- , the phone rings and for a second, just for a second, she’ll hope that she doesn’t recognize the number.

She will hate herself for it after, always, _always,_ but there will be always be a split-second of hope right before the screen flashes with a name – Jack, Zeller, Price, anyone, _everyone –_ and she’ll grip her phone just a little tighter.

He doesn’t call.

The point isn’t that she expected him to call. The point is that she, well, _wanted_.

*

There are traces of Will everywhere, on the table, on the coat-hanger, in the air, on the paper, echoing through the vent.

His coffee mug is still there on his desk, half-shrouded in the darkness, rim still stained with the last touch of his lips. There’s a pen too, lying on his table uncapped, like he had to rush out from his office that last time. There are papers too, too many papers, files on Garrett Jacob Hobbs’ victims, data on the Ripper case, flung around his table because he probably never expected anyone to come in and file through his things.

She opens one of his drawers and sees a half-eaten Mars bar, rewrapped meticulously in the original wrapper, teeth marks at the edge still visible.

She wonders if he would’ve bothered to clean up, cap his pen, if he had known that they would be coming. She wonders if he had known when he had rushed out of his office that it would be the – not the last, never the last, but the word is on her lips, and it’s too bitter to be anything but the truth – last time.

Somehow, she thinks the answer is no. He had never needed to work at impressing others, really.

On a whim, she pulls out her phone and takes a picture of the organized mess that is - was- his desk. And then another one.

*

She doesn’t know why she gets up at midnight just to turn on her printer, but half an hour later and she finds herself developing the pictures from his office. They come out great, better than she’s expected, really; all odd angles and blurred edges trying to find something, anything that _means_.

 _Dear Will,_ she tries to write and the words stick in her throat, at the nib of her pen. It’s like she’s forgotten the words already.

They do this every day, dig through the blood and the semen and the nail scrapings and reconstruct a killer, hunt him down and try to save the world. This is their job. This has always been _her_ job.

The thing is, she didn’t expect to care.

_*_

_Dear Will_ , she writes on the back of the picture of his coffee mug.

She gets stuck somewhere after the first two words, too many syllables rushing through her head, none making it down on paper.

 _I miss you_ isn’t appropriate, or technically true and she doesn’t want to say things like _hope prison isn’t too traumatizing_ _._ Opening old wounds, or something like that.

Mostly, the things she wants to say start with _I_ and don’t end in her mind, never end, and she doesn’t know how to wrap her head around the plethora of words she feels like she’s drowning in.

 _Dear Will_ , she tries again.

_I… stopped by your office today. Your mug really needed some washing._

She drops the picture into an envelope and seals it before she can properly think of what she’s really doing. 

She leaves the picture unsigned. He will know, that much she’s sure of. He always knows.

*

They don’t fall apart without him, but she had always known that.

They had been an efficient team before, and they remain the same later. It doesn’t take long to step into the skin of their jobs, to fall back into routine without missing a step.  Jack speaks with the LEOs, Zeller determines the cause of death and Price excels in discovering identities from barely a fingerprint.  No one can best her at fiber analysis either, that much remains the same.

And if sometimes, she walks into a crime scene and snaps at the police to move out, clear the scene and let him do his—

This is where she stops herself, but no one’s keeping track here.

*

 _Dear Will,_ and the picture is of his pen, uncapped, motionless.

_I ran out of ink and grabbed your pen instead. I know it’s your favorite; don’t worry, I won’t let it dry out._

*

She snaps at a sheriff who tries to talk to her using words like _instability within the bureau_ and _that guy who cracked under stress_.

“I think that if you had been more focused on the case than FBI politics, you would have alerted us before four families were killed,” her voice is crisp and firm, and her heels click on the cobbled road as she walks away.

Zeller finds her at the corner just around their latest crime scene, hunched over a bush, ripping her gloves off like they’ve physically offended her and trying to breathe.

“Everything alright?” he asks her, looking at her like she might break.

She  straightens instinctively and takes a deep breath. “Fine,” is all she replies with.

He looks at her hesitantly. “We all wanted him to be innocent,” he starts, softly, like he might set her off. She stops halfway through putting her hair up and bites the inside of her cheek.

She tries to smile and her mouth is stiff, filled with things she won’t say out loud. “I know,” she offers him a way out of this.

“We all miss him,” Zeller tries again, and she cannot stop herself from looking away. She wonders when she became this person, someone who allowed themselves to feel.

“”But, Beverly,” he continues, putting a hand on her shoulder and forcing her to meet his eyes, “we found the evidence that put him away.” His eyes are kind and trying very hard to be understanding and some other time, she would’ve been grateful.

“ _You_ found the evidence that put him away,” he tells her and she _understands_.  She looks away first, looks away again.

*

_Dear Will,_

_I borrowed a box of your teabags today. Who knew you were a Darjeeling guy, I always put you down for Earl Grey. Don’t worry, I’ll save you some._

_*_

It’s not that she’s actively hoping for a reply.

It’s just that she would like a confirmation, some kind of sign that he’s actually reading the pictures, that her postage stamps aren’t going to waste.

There are times when she collects her mail, flipping through bills and brochures and the occasional card from her mother and there are only two more envelopes left in the pile, and for a second, a brief second, she’ll allow herself to hope that if she flips through that one penultimate letter, it will be something with his name on it, that it will be something, anything –

He doesn’t reply, so there’s that.

*

_Dear Will,_

_I found this t-shirt in your bottom left drawer. Did you even know that you apparently own a_ Lord of the Rings _shirt? Don’t worry, I’ll send it to the drycleaners, it looks filthy._

*

The cases don’t stop.

There are young adults being killed in Seattle, old, retired women murdered brutally in their sleep in Florida. An arsonist wreaks havoc in Texas and there’s a series of kidnappings in South Carolina. Their phones ring constantly, files gets faxed over, and life replaces life replaces death and nothing stops.

Sometimes, they don’t find the link. Sometimes, there are sleepless nights and living in the lab and too much caffeine resulting in nothing concrete, nothing that can be presented for a warrant – yet another case added to the pile of unsolved ones. Mostly though, they save enough lives for it to count for something, they incarcerate enough criminals and psychopaths and arsonists and sex offenders for it to make sleep bearable at night.

And if she takes an extra five, ten, fifteen minutes at the scene, no one keeps count. If she reaches the end of her rope, fail to save the last victim on time, they pretend that Will’s voice doesn’t echo through their silences, _the evidence is always there_ resounding through nothing, everything.

 _Miss_ isn’t the word she’d really use, but it’s the easiest one that falls off her lips.

*

_Dear Will,_

_I met Alana for lunch today and she brought Winston and Mugsy along with her. I thought you would like to see how much they’ve grown. I gave them your t-shirt and they went crazy over it. I think they want you back._

_*_

In retrospect, she has no idea why she goes to see him.  

The fact that she’ll get to see him doesn’t quite sit, rest with her until she’s standing in front of her cell, a bitter taste in her mouth at the thought of the mere words and a minor tremor in her hand.

She tells herself  that she clutches the bars of his cell simply because they’re there.  The guard tells her to be careful, that these patients have the tendency to be violent, and she laughs through the sob rising in her chest.

She sees him before he sees her. When she sees him, he’s seated cross-legged on the floor, hands folded on his knees and staring at the wall on the other side of his cell. She clears his throat.

He turns around, startled, pulled away from something important. Her first glimpse of him in days is through iron bars of a prison cell as he blinks at her, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, under a frizzy mop of hair.

There is a joke here somewhere, but she’s forgotten how to laugh.

*

He looks –  

“Beverly,” he exclaims in surprise, getting to his feet across from her. At a different time, their knees would be touching.

She shrugs her shoulders a little. She has no idea why she’s there, and bless him, he doesn’t ask.

“I got your pictures,” he murmurs to her, voice low and soothing like he’s trying to comfort _her_ and she tries to laugh at the absurdity of it.

“Thank you,” he tells her again. The silence scorches her skin until she can do nothing but open her mouth and speak.

“I,” she begins, and he looks at her with kind eyes, nothing save for curiosity in his expression. She loves him a little then, just for not being cold.

“I don’t really know why I’m here,” she tells him. His fingertips brush over hers through the bars and something tingles, pools low in her belly. One side of his mouth quirks upwards and it’s not a smile, quite, but she takes it nonetheless.

“I have a lot to say,” he replies and her hands tighten against the bars. When she opens her mouth to speak again, her voice shakes enough for him to catch it.

“I am so sorry I couldn’t,” she stops abruptly and takes a deep breath. He moves half a step closer grabs both her wrists in his hands.

There’s a joke in here somewhere too; she has no idea what he wants her to say.

*

She doesn’t know how her sentence ends, is what it comes down to.

 _I am so sorry I couldn’t help,_ she wants to say at times, and at other times it’s all a combination, a jumble, a mix of _I’m so sorry I couldn’t come earlier, that I couldn’t write more often, that I couldn’t_ save _you_.

Standing in front of him, her wrists in his hands, she tells him: “I am so sorry I couldn’t believe.”

Dear Will. He looks just like himself.

He lets go of her wrists, then.

*

Cleveland is cold and unfriendly and far too empty when they don’t have a lead on their next case. Newly married couples are being targeted all over the city, bodies dumped in deserted alleyways with two pairs of lungs carved out.

They go through everything with a fine-toothed comb and nothing jumps out, no common ground, no clue that they might know each other, that their social circles might have overlapped at some point, no way to narrow down the killings geographically.

She breaks on the fourth day of absolute nothingness, and prays that it’s not too late.

*

_Dear Will,_

_I’m wearing that scarf I had showed you, the one my little niece knitted for me. It itches a little, but Cleveland is freezing and I needed something to keep me warm._

It’s the most she will let herself ask of him.

*

Her phone rings in the middle of the next crime scene a day later, and something skips in her chest when she doesn’t recognize the number. She waits just long enough to move out to the main street before answering.

“Check if the men have recently dyed their hair brown,” Will’s voice is calm, quiet, lacking any inflection at all. “Then cross-reference for salons offering organic coloring treatments.”

She tries to breathe. “Will,” she begins and he sighs on the other side.

“I should go,” he tells her and the phone disconnects in her ear.

*

“That’s an impressive breakthrough you had there,” Jack approaches her as she’s refilling her coffee back at the local police station.

She adds a packet of sugar into her drink and focuses on keeping her fingers from shaking.

Jack puts his hand over hers and gently puts her mug back down on the table. “You can’t keep doing this,” he tells her, like she needed telling in the first place. “This isn’t healthy or normal, not to mention the fact that it’s _illegal.”_

Something snaps within her, and she thinks that maybe, maybe that’s what she’s been waiting for. Her fingers clench underneath the table, nails scraping against her palms and the feel of Will’s fingertips pressing into her wrists.

“Well, he got you the right guy, didn’t he?”she hisses at him and picks up her mug. When she walks away, Jack doesn’t stop her.

*

The first thing she does when they get back is pull his files, spreading every single bit of _Graham, William_ over her tables and poring over the same lines, over and over and over again.

The evidence is all there, every single bit of every potential action he might’ve taken perfectly explained. Not a single minute of his life is out of place. It is perfection, really, ordered arrays and categories of evidence against him that can explain every single one of his actions.

She rearranges the files and sits back, marvels of the sheer order in every page of the case against him. And then, she sits back in her chair and allows herself to smile. Just a little.

The thing is, Will is one of the messiest people she’s ever known. Order doesn’t suit him at all.

*

_Dear Will,_

_I want to listen to you, if you’ll let me._

*

The first day of his court hearing and she manages to get a minute, just a little while away with him in the midst of the security and the press and the bureaucrats who’ve turned up for the trial.

He would’ve looked impeccable in his suit, if it hadn’t been for the not-quite controlled head of hair and the constant twitching of his thumb. She catches his elbow right before he’s escorted into the courtroom. His eyes are calm, clear and bright and alert when she turns to look at him, and she takes a deep breath.

 _This will be over soon_ , she repeats to herself again. And again. They will both make sure of it.

Will’s mouth is against his hair, breathing hot and just a little labored and words hot and falling over her earlobes. She shivers fractionally. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t,” he breathes into her ea.

She reminds herself yet again, forces herself to breathe. His fingers curl over her own, encircle the palm of her hands. She doesn’t look away.

“I’m so sorry I couldn’t keep you away,” he tells her, looking at her through lowered eyelashes, stroking the inside of her wrist with the pad of her thumb.

He smiles at her, something alive and awake in his eyes and she tries her best to smile back, never wants to break eye-contact.

*

And crumpled and thrown away, buried deep within her trashcan in a corner of her bedroom –

Splashes of ink and beneath the layers of words scratched out, desperately erased but never forgotten –

_Dear Will,_

_I_

~~_love you._ ~~

 *


End file.
